The JCB Bids Farewell to Pedro Germano Leal

Summer is a bittersweet season at the John Carter Brown Library (JCB) this year, as our inaugural Associate Director for Digital Asset Management Dr. Pedro Germano Leal will be leaving at the end of July to take up a new position at University of Glasgow (Scotland, UK). 

Pedro has been an integral part of the team at the JCB for over five years, and during that time we have grown our digital ambitions and capacity. Karin Wulf notes that “our digital capabilities and commitment have expanded enormously with Pedro’s truly innovative approach to accessible library platforms.” David Rumsey, an advisor to the JCB's digital program, who has also served on the JCB's Board noted that Leal's “leadership of Americana's development has been superb.” 

In this interview, we discuss highlights of Pedro’s time here at the JCB, his new role in Scotland, and more. 

What first interested you about joining the team at the JCB?

I’m from the first generation of scholars that relied on digital books, and because of that, libraries became a central part of my work as a scholar. When I saw the job advertisement for  a position in digital work at the JCB, I was absolutely fascinated. I was selected for the interview, and when I came here—when I saw the cohort of fellows, the Reading Room, and how amazing the books were—I decided it would be a great privilege to work and be part of the history of the JCB in any capacity. So I think it was a combination of factors. I felt that coming to the JCB would allow me to continue my work as a scholar, as a digital humanist. In 2022, my work and responsibilities expanded a lot as I transitioned from post-doctoral fellow to staff member.

There is no question that you have been a major part of some of the important changes that have taken place at the JCB since you joined the institution. What are some of the highlights of your time here?

The greatest highlight is definitely the colleagues I worked with. The team at the JCB has done extraordinary things together. They’re extremely knowledgeable, creative, and collegial. My greatest achievement has been working with this team and witnessing its growth—in numbers and in professional development. I was also involved in key projects: Americana, the new digital platform for the JCB; the 10-year digitization plan; and a new workflow for cataloging and digitization. And I think being able to collaborate with colleagues on these projects has been incredibly exciting.

You mentioned Americana, an innovative platform unique to the JCB that offers users around the world access to digitized items and lets them create and share projects. Can you tell us more about your experience with Americana?

Coming from a scholarly background, I had—as many people do—the illusion that a library has one catalog. But of course, libraries have multiple catalogs and digital projects that are all entangled in some way. So the first priority for Americana was to create one place that brings together both metadata—the information about the items—and the items themselves, the digital assets.

The second thing was realizing that the JCB had over 200 archived exhibitions. These represented only a fraction of our materials, so it was necessary to create new pathways into the collection. We connected primary sources with these secondary sources—exhibitions and catalogs produced over 175 years.

Once we made this architecture possible, the question became: why not make this accessible to everyone? That’s when we explored what we called “niche sourcing”—allowing the community to help build knowledge about the collection. By giving people curatorial tools to create projects, exhibitions, updated bibliographies, and so on, we help them create while also benefiting from the knowledge they add. This could include connecting items, explaining difficult materials, and bringing attention to items in different languages, including Indigenous languages.

Americana was born from our mission to provide responsible access to the collection.

Can you tell us a bit about your new role at Glasgow?

I’ve been trained as an interdisciplinary scholar, with a background in classics, text and image studies, and art history. In Scotland, I’ll take on the inaugural professorship in Text and Image Studies at the Stirling Maxwell Centre for the Study of Text/Image Cultures at the University of Glasgow, my alma mater. The library there holds the largest and finest collection of emblem books—a genre early modern illustrated books combining engravings and poems in very special ways—, which happens to be my academic specialty.

Based on my experience at the JCB, I hope to help lead the center and bring my expertise in information studies back into my scholarly work. Before coming to the JCB, my work was highly specialized and reached only a small audience. But working with Americana made me realize that my work can have a broader impact. I want to help engage with my discipline so it can reach a wider readership, especially in a time when texts and images are often used to disinform. I feel a responsibility to address this contemporary issue from a critical and historical perspective.

What are the greatest lessons you’ve learned during your time at the JCB?

One of the biggest lessons is that institutions will outlast us. I remember being very stressed about technical problems, and then seeing a photo of the JCB from the 1930s—people standing exactly where I was, probably dealing with the same issues. That was very humbling. Now, when I see a library catalogue, I remember that these bibliographic records were made by generations of catalogers and librarians.

From a scholarly point of view, I learned how much our search engines and processes come from paradigms that were built for online stores. This creates bibliographic bubbles based on popularity. It’s important to burst these bubbles so we can do original research.

And I’ve learned from working with others—the human side of this work. I feel privileged to have worked here. Everyone is replaceable in a sense, because these institutions will survive us, there is a sense that we are all working for the common good, in tasks that are open ended. But we are living through a major shift in how information is produced and consumed online, in ways that are affecting our very social fabric. 

Because the JCB focuses on the colonial history of the Americas, we see how rewriting the past can contribute to misinformation on social media. At the same time, generative AI systems are being trained on content that’s produced by other generative AIs. The quality of that information is increasingly doubtful, to put it mildly. 

Libraries help preserve collective knowledge produced through very sophisticated processes, including peer review, editing, publishing, describing, shelving, curating, digitizing—all so this information can be found and used properly. The sooner institutions and governments see libraries as tools that can be used to combat digital misinformation, the better. I’m privileged to say that the John Carter Brown Library is at the forefront of this conversation.

Best of luck in your new role, Pedro! You will be missed!